Phoenix
by KnightNight7203
Summary: "Sometimes I'm sitting here and I can't help thinking — what if they put me back together wrong?" In which a recently not-dead teenage spider-kid might be in over his head with all this messy trauma stuff.
1. Chapter 1

Peter and Ned have sleepovers almost every night now.

They're usually at Peter's house, because Peter has a bunk bed, and also because May gets it. Well, she doesn't completely get it, because he's deliberately left some things out — the Thing They Never Talk About, for one. But she gets some of it. She hears the nightmares, the ones that leave him yelling and shaking and unable to go back to sleep for the rest of the night, and sees the resulting circles under his eyes the next day. She watches him stumble around the house when he should be leaving for school, puking in the kitchen sink when he doesn't make it to the bathroom and repeatedly checking for aliens behind the curtains and under the bed like a stupid toddler. One time he caught sight of some ash drifting in through an open window — probably someone smoking on a fire escape nearby — and he shattered a cup in his literal hand. She barely even flinched, just picked up the glass and made sure his hand stopped bleeding. So everything else aside, she gets this: space is scary, and he's struggling to cope

(Death is scary too, but he'll never, emever/em burden her with that knowledge.)

Here's how the sleepovers typically go: Ned throws his pillow on the top bunk — he sometimes even starts out laying up there — and then at some point crawls down next to where Peter is curled up in a nest of blankets down below, zoning out or hyperventilating and just generally trying to hold himself together. He'll put on a movie. He'll build some Lego stuff while Peter watches. He talks constantly — about school, about comics, about nothing in particular. Honestly, Peter's not sure he ever feels safer than he does in those moments of feigned normalcy.

Then, as it gets later and later, Ned will start to plan a casual retreat. "I should let you get to sleep," he'll say. "I'll move up to the top bunk after we finish this set of instructions." But he'll eventually fall silent and drift off without moving, feet just brushing Peter's, maybe an arm thrown over his side. Every once in a while, Peter actually sleeps a little too.

Ned really likes to cuddle and Peter is obviously too big of a mess to function on his own, so this is working out pretty well for both of them so far.

Most of the time, the whole arrangement is fine. It's better than fine, actually — it's perfect. Ned leaves him well enough alone while simultaneously filling the room with comforting mindless chatter, a skill Peter should really start appreciate more, and if Peter starts to get lost somewhere that's not Earth, Ned pokes him on the shoulder and shoves a bag of chips at him and that's that. But there are times when Ned takes Peter's silence as a sign that something is really wrong, and decides it's his job to somehow, impossibly, fix it.

Today is apparently one of those days.

"Peter," Ned says, very deliberately avoiding eye contact in a way that makes Peter decidedly nervous, "I think you're crying."

Weird. Peter sniffs and rubs at his cheek with his sleeve. He hadn't even been thinking about anything in particular.

"You good, man?" Ned asks. "Like, really? Because sometimes I just … I don't know."

Peter picks up the final Lego piece to add to their current project — the _Black Pearl_ from _Pirates of the Caribbean_ — just to prove he's a-okay.

"I'm fine," he says, shrugging. And he is, all things considered. He's breathing. He's not locked in a padded room. So let that be the end of it.

Ned doesn't believe him, though, because as much as they joke about Star Wars constantly, Ned actually does have weird Jedi mind powers sometimes. He raises an eyebrow and rubs his nose. Peter eats a chip, which tastes weird and chalky in his mouth. Ned turns the _Black Pearl_ around, then around again, as if looking for somewhere to add something even though it's already finished.

"Are you thinking about it right now?" Ned asks finally.

"About what?" Peter asks, even though he knows. Even though he's Not thinking about it as hard as he possibly can.

"The Thing We Never Talk About."

Yeah. That.

Because they never talk about it, Peter has no earthly idea how Ned figured out he was one of the people who … one of the unlucky half of the population. He never actually told him, obviously. But Ned took one look at Peter the first time they saw each other _after_ and said, "I'm so glad you're back," in a broken, terrified voice, and Peter knew he wasn't just talking about a jaunty trip to space.

Part of Peter is honestly so relieved that someone else knows, that there's someone he doesn't have to explain everything to, because if he wanted to talk about it — not that he does, but if he _wanted_ to — it would be easy now. He could literally say anything to Ned, and it would be fine, and Ned would get it, and then he might feel better.

Except he doesn't actually _want_ to say anything about it at all.

Also, he's really worried that Ned might kind of blame himself. Not that anything was in any way Ned's fault, of course. The thing affected the entire universe, and Earth certainly wasn't spared either. But Ned was the one who created the distraction that got Peter off the bus, and Peter can tell he remembers that moment with some kind of heavy responsibility. He doesn't want him to feel worse if he describes something that … well, something bad.

"I try not to think about it at all," Peter replies.

"That's good, I guess" Ned says musingly. "Because it's over now, it's in the past, and there's no use worrying about something that won't ever happen again."

"Right." This is basically what Peter tells himself, every time he starts to freak out for no reason.

"But if you're worrying anyway …" Ned trails off, a little nervous because they just don't push on this, but then he keeps going, "if you're worrying anyway, you can always tell me. You know that. Right?

"I know there's nothing to be worried about," Peter says. "It's over. I think the best thing would be for me to just forget."

Ned looks at Peter. Peter looks back at him and nods. That was good, right? He can leave it at that. He pushes the emBlack Pearl/em onto the floor and turns the light off, rolling under the covers and curling up with his back to Ned — _that's_ how done he is with this conversation.

But incredible genius that he is, something makes him decide to keep going.

"Except sometimes I'm sitting here and I can't help thinking, what if they put me back together wrong?"

The second the words are out of Peter's mouth — words he hadn't thought about, words he hadn't planned — he takes a mental step back to consider them. Is that really something he's afraid of now? Is that really something that's going to keep him up at night?

It is, he realizes just as quickly, it truly is. And what's worse is, he didn't just pull an entirely new fear out of thin air. No, he named the shapeless, hulking anxiety that's been lurking at the back of his mind, almost powerless in its vagueness, since the moment he came back.

It feels much stronger now. Suddenly, helplessly, he wants to scream.

"They?"

Peter flinches at the unexpected sound of Ned's voice in the darkness, but he manages to cover it pretty well. "I don't know. The universe. Gods. Magic. Whatever … whatever's out there that put me back together. After the thing."

Ned shifts around for a minute, and his breathing sounds deeply uncomfortable. Like he has a lot of words he'd like to say, but he doesn't know which ones are okay to use. Honestly, Peter wishes he would just say something. It's hearing him talk that really helps. And while Peter can't personally bring himself to even whisper _Thanos_ or _gauntlet_ or _death_ out loud, he doesn't really think it would bother him if someone else said it.

Probably.

"What do you mean by wrong?" Ned whispers finally, and Peter hears a note of fear in his voice. Is he scared to ask and force Peter deeper into the Thing They Never Talk About? Or does he think Peter is right, that something is terribly, horribly damaged inside him?

"Like, that they did it wrong. Like something inside here—" Peter paws at his chest helplessly "—isn't right or something."

Ned pulls Peter's hand away from his chest and squeezes it tight. "Does it feel wrong, do you think?" And there it is, the thing Peter loves about Ned — he never fails to take him seriously, no matter how ridiculous he sounds.

Peter shrugs. A host of symptoms are coming back to him now, things he remembers feeling before he drifts off at night, when he wakes in the morning, when he finds himself alone and a cloud covers the sun and he wonders if he's the last person left on earth. "It feels … fluttery. Sometimes. I don't know — it's hard to describe."

"It was magic though, right? That fixed everything?"

"Yeah." Actually, Peter has no freaking clue, but it was probably magic. "Or some kind of super science."

Ned nods decisively. "Then there's no reason it would be wrong."

Peter wishes he had even an ounce of that confidence. Needless to say, he doesn't.

Here's the thing — he felt it. He felt it in the tingling of his arms and the curdling in his stomach, he knew it was coming — unlike everyone else, going by the looks on Starlord and Drax's faces — and he got to feel it, prolonged and in excruciating detail, as his fancy healing powers battled imminent disintegration and _lost._

He remembers that feeling with disturbing clarity, remembers the sharpness and the emptiness and and the pinching and the fading. What he doesn't remember — what he can't even begin to picture — is being put back together again.

So how is he supposed to trust that it was done right?

Ned rolls closer, still holding Peter's hand. "Were there any good parts?"

"About dying?" Peter asks incredulously, and then he's wheezing, and it takes him a solid minute to get everything under of control. He knows Ned is worried, because he holds on tighter, but he can also pretty much feel him rolling his eyes.

"About _space_ , idiot," Ned says literally the second Peter quiets. "Because, you know, you were in space and we haven't even, like, talked about it. It might help to focus on that and not all the scary things."

Peter thinks about it. Then he thinks some more. Ned's practically breathing down his neck with excitement — he recognizes that it must've taken a lot of restraint to hold that question in for so long, until it came up naturally in a conversation Peter didn't physically run away from — but he doesn't want to say the wrong thing, doesn't want to misrepresent the adventure. Because Ned's right — especially for them, this is a big deal. This is _Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate_. This is space.

If he's being honest, though, there's a lot he doesn't actually remember. He was focused on the plans and on the fight, because he had to be, because if he stopped to think about how they were floating in a deadly soul-crushing vacuum, how the millions of miles that separated him from May were ones he couldn't cross on his own no matter how hard he wished or tried, he would never have been able to stay on his feet and help Mr. Stark. And even the things he does remember, about the ship and the planet it took them to — well, he's not exactly sure how trustworthy those things are. He thinks the wind was harsh on Titan, for example, searing his lungs and burning his eyes. He thinks the sun was brutal, making his skin itch. He even remembers a little bounce in his step, like his weight had changed, like gravity was different. But maybe it's easier to remember things that seem absurd, things that were nothing like Earth, things that couldn't possibly intersect with real life and match up with an experience he might have here.

What happens in space stays in space, and he needs it to be very, very far away from anything that might happen to him again.

"We sucked somebody out the side of a ship like in emAlien/em," is what he finally says, and that seems to satisfy Ned, so he doesn't offer anything more.

For a long time, they stare up at the bottom of the bed above them in silence. There are a few of those little glow-in-the-dark stars stuck up there, from when Peter was really little — Ben brought them home during his space phase, he thinks, although he's not completely sure anymore. Ned breaths steadily, in and out, in and out. Peter fidgets and nibbles on the fingernails of one hand, since the other is still trapped firmly in Ned's grip.

"Peter?" Ned whispers, long after Peter had assumed he went to sleep. "You still with me?"

"Yeah."

He's quiet for a minute, then speaks with an intensity Peter can feel even without looking at him. "I can't make you trust me. I can't change what you feel. But I just want you to know, you seem completely normal to me."

Peter forces a smile and says, "Thanks, man," because he can't really manage anything else.

"He's not sure he believes him. Not really. But it's apparently enough to calm him down a little, because the next time he opens his eyes, the sun is shining through the window.


	2. Chapter 2

Michelle catches him behind the school with a concrete barrier balanced on his chest, trying to hold himself down and keep from blowing away, and maybe smush whatever is wrong back into place at the same time. Two birds with one stone, etc. etc. He's not having much luck.

What he is feeling, instead of the relief he was hoping for, is squished and lightheaded and pretty stupid (although he's not actually absurdly panicky at this particular moment, so maybe something about this arrangement is working out for him after all?). When he notices her, he closes his eyes really tight, just to see if she'll go away. He hadn't exactly wanted anyone to see him like this. But if it had to be someone, Michelle is definitely better than Flash or one of his friends. That would've been _really_ bad.

"What the fuck, weirdo," she says, ignoring any and all signs that he's not in a talkative mood just like she usually ignores his feelings and opinions. It's not a question that's looking for an answer, at least — Michelle never asks anymore, no matter how strange he acts.

He's too out-of-breath to answer her properly — this thing is maybe a little heavier than his initial calculations led him to believe — but after a minute he shoots her a little grin instead. He hopes it's dashing. He suspects it's probably closer to delirious.

"Your veins are popping out of your forehead," she says with an expertly raised eyebrow, completely unimpressed. Then she turns on her heel and walks away.

Thank God.

(Although … he wasn't aware of how quiet it was out here until she broke the silence and then promptly left him alone.)

(Silence maybe isn't his favorite thing right now.)

(He starts to hum to himself — in his head, because he doesn't have the breath to do it out loud. Music is good. It makes him feel a little better. Maybe he should go crawling back to band.)

(Would they let him back? He's not sure.)

(Does he even remember how to read music at this point?)

Seconds or hours later — he's kind of lost track of time — she wanders back. She stares at him for a long while, then rolls her eyes and sits on the pavement beside him with an exaggerated huff. "Aren't you worried someone will see you under there?" she asks him after a few minutes.

He blinks, both at the question and the fact that she asked it. He and Michelle don't really _talk_ — they mostly just shoot one-liners back and forth and then go back to ignoring each other — and he's not really sure how to do it. Not when there's no one else around to distract them when things get awkward or antagonistic. Especially not when they get dangerously close to things he doesn't talk about with anybody but Ned. Superhero things, that is.

And yet by this point he's like 93 percent sure she knows he's Spider-Man too, and if he's right about that, then she's also completely flabbergasted that no one else has figured it out. What with his lack of stealth skills and the fact that Ned is his best friend and all. In his head, assuming this is true, she seems frustrated by that fact. He's not sure if she wants people to find out to prove some kind of point, or because she just thinks it'll be funny. But she actually sounds a little concerned right now, under her usual sarcasm, which makes him wonder.

He considers the risks for a second, then shakes his head. Nobody really remembers what happened, but kids have been going straight home after school these past few weeks. There's a general sense of uneasiness in the air — people want to be close to their families. It makes sense. You never know how much time you have left.

Peter wants to be close to his family too. Except he's terrified of scaring May any more than he already has, and he also accidentally peeled the wallpaper off the walls in the kitchen while literally climbing them from anxiety. He's trying this new thing where he gives her some space, so they can really lean on each other when they both actually need it.

(That, and he's terrified she'll find out about the Thing They Never Talk About. However much he imagines that moment, he knows he's not prepared.)

"Do you require some kind of assistance?" Michelle is still there, still staring at him, like he's both crazy and something that needs to be protected. She's never given him that look before — well the crazy part, yeah, but not the other part. It takes him a minute to recognize it, and it leaves a funny feeling in his chest — or maybe that's just the concrete barrier. Anyway, he's weirdly glad she's here all of a sudden.

"Yes," he whispers honestly. Still, he knows she can't actually help him, so he doesn't elaborate.

Michelle waits. She waits some more. Finally she stomps her feet in front of her a few times, some sort of impatient habit, and huffs a little breath.

"That's not a lot to go on, Parker," she says.

He shrugs. "I'm starting to work through some things, I think," he says. That's something a normal person could admit to, right? Everybody has things that they work through, even if they're not anything like his upon closer inspection. "At this point, I don't have a lot to go on either."

"This isn't some kind of weird suicide ritual, though, right? Should I say something profound?"

Peter flinches, quick and automatic. "Do I look like I'm dying? I'm not dying. I'm fine." His voice comes out faster than he wanted it to. Higher, too.

Michelle's mouth puckers a little. "You kind of look like you're freaking out, actually."

He laughs, then chokes, then finds himself uncomfortably blinking tears out of his eyes. "I don't want to blow away," is what eventually comes out of his mouth, entirely without permission.

He cringes — that's a really, _really_ weird thing to say. Without context, it makes about zero sense. But Michelle, bless her, takes it all in stride. (She also pretends not to notice he's crying all of a sudden, which he mentally stores away to appreciate later.)

"Aha," she said, with a little nod that makes him feel, if not logical, at least not completely crazy. Then she rises to her feet and climbs on top of the barrier resting on his body, sitting cross-legged above him.

His remaining breath leaves him in a whoosh. He thinks he feels his ribs creaking.

He somehow feels so, so much safer.

"Am I squishing you?" she asks, blinking down at him with a vague approximation of concern — like she tried to care, but not too hard, because that would just be lame.

"A little," he says, adding, before she can move, "it's perfect."

Michelle snorts. "You're such a weirdo."

In reply, Peter just smiles. He's starting to realize that, when she says things like that, it's not meant to be mean. Something about her teasing is almost … affectionate? Not that she'd ever admit it, of course, but he can sense a subtle, hesitant fondness all the same.

Actually, he's maybe starting to count Michelle as one of his friends.

He takes a moment to consider some details he hasn't really gathered together in the past: 1. Michelle doesn't actively hate him. 2. Michelle almost definitely probably knows he's Spider-Man. 3. Michelle will, on occasion, go slightly out of her way to talk to him. 4. Michelle seems mildly concerned when he happens to be noticeably falling apart at the seams.

That's a person you can talk to, right? Ned is all of those things, and Peter talks to him. Something weird inside of him is starting to whisper that talking might actually be good right now. In a split second, he decides Michelle is someone he can trust. He rolls with it.

"I used to be scared of concrete," he says randomly.

Hmm. Maybe not the ideal place to start, but let it be known that he made an effort.

"That's random," Michelle replies.

"Concrete buildings," he explains, already kind of wishing he hadn't opened his mouth. "When I was inside one, I would just … picture all the ways it could fall down. I'd imagine people getting trapped. Getting _hurt_. It was …" Terrifying. Soul-crushing. "Kinda bad."

They blink at each other. "Were you going somewhere with that, or …"

"I think …" Was he? "I think I just meant that, like, I've dealt with things on my own before. So you don't have to—" Worry? "Bother."

"You know what I think?" she asks, poking at a loose rock in the concrete until it wiggles free. It bounces off his forehead, but he doesn't comment on that. She'd probably do it again just to annoy him.

"What?"

"I think you're not scared of concrete anymore. You've got a big chunk of it sitting in the middle of your chest."

He shrugs as best he can with said concrete restricting his movement. "Other things kind of came up. They took precedence."

"Well I also think, if you got over that, you'll get over this too." This time when a pebble hits his forehead, Michelle is grinning — she totally did it on purpose. "You're gonna be okay."

"Thanks," he says.

She shrugs.

"Do you have to get home or something?" Peter asks after a few minutes of barely-awkward silence, because he is starting to feel bad that she's out here with him when she could be doing something worthwhile like homework or reading or sleeping or literally anything else. Unless maybe she wants to be. But people like Michelle are happiest when they're alone — right? They don't actually need someone like him.

"Not really." Michelle shakes her head. "Nobody's there anyway. I'm good." The way she says that, though … there's a note of something in her voice that sounds a little not-good.

Peter squints at her for a second, studying. He's sure he's being subtle.

"Got something to say?"

Well. Apparently not so subtle, then.

"I just think you might be lonely sometimes," Peter offers, stupidly probably, because that's not the kind of thing you say to a person like Michelle.

She smirks at him. "And I think you have a hero complex."

Um. _Um._ "Wh—what?" he stutters, over the sound of her laughter at what he's sure is a priceless expression on his face. He's almost _sure_ she knows, so why does it stress him out so much when she says things with sneaky double meanings like this? "I don't know what you mean."

"I mean, you're the one laying under a slab of concrete bursting into tears every thirty seconds. Worry about your damn self and let me be lonely or not in peace."

"Oh," he says. That's valid. "Sorry."

"Besides," she says, offering him a little smile. "You're my friend, right? So why would I be lonely?"

"I don't know," he says slowly, but actually, he kind of does. Maybe because when he thinks about his two friends, he's uncomfortably aware that he spends almost every waking minute with one, watching movies and playing games and working on projects and coming up with crazy inside jokes, and he maybe acknowledges the other three times a week. Upon reflection, that doesn't exactly seem fair. He's definitely going to change that now.

It's stupid — he never really thought Michelle had feelings to hurt, but she's a person, so of course she does.

"We're definitely friends, though," he assures her, because her saying it first seems like permission to acknowledge it without being lame or mushy or whatever. "I mean, Ned and I — we'd like to be your friends. That's cool. Just so you know."

"Okay, Parker," Michelle says, sliding to the ground and motioning for him to get up, too. "Whatever you say. So are you adequately distracted now?"

Peter blinks at the change in her tone. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you no longer look like you're about to vomit, faint, or shoot steam out your ears in a brain explosion of epic proportions. Have I been sufficiently strange and obnoxious enough to distract you from your overwhelming teenage misery?"

Oh. That's what she was doing. He didn't even realize — it's definitely a different technique than the one he's used to Ned using — but it actually did kind of work. He feels a lot better.

"I think I'm okay now," he tells her. Then he takes a deep breath and starts to wriggle out from under the concrete. It takes him a hot minute — the barrier is _really_ heavy. But when he finally raises it off himself, he still feels solid, _together_ , which is nice.

Michelle watches him with a weird expression on her face. He likes to imagine she's staring at the superhero muscles in his arms, but in all probability she's just watching his hands shake like a leaf in the breeze.

"I'll walk you home," she says once the concrete is safely on the ground again, throwing his backpack at him and starting to drag him down the sidewalk by his sleeve.

"Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"

The thing that happens to Michelle's face in the seconds after he asks this question is probably the closest real-life comparison to vampires growing fangs on the spot. She looks positively murderous. "Because I'm a girl?"

"Of course not," he says, backpedalling furiously. "It's just because I'm— because I can—"

"Relax," she says, snickering, her face softening. "I'm messing with you."

"Oh."

She punches his arm lightly. "Why don't you let someone look after you for a change?"

Really, he doesn't really have a good answer to that. And so, just like she said, Michelle walks him home.


End file.
